For economy watchers, the most fascinating game in town is the continuing effort to explain why employment and unemployment are performing better than you'd expect while growth in the economy has been so modest.
Despite the Bureau of Statistics' latest national accounts showing that real gross domestic product grew by just 2.3 per cent over the year to March, its smoothed seasonally adjusted labour force figures show employment growing by 2.1 per cent – or 240,000 jobs – over the year to July, with the rate of unemployment seeming to have stabilised at about 6 per cent.
So far in the Reserve Bank's efforts to explain this puzzle, we've heard that it's probably a consequence of slower than expected population growth, helped by surprisingly weak growth in wage rates.
But now an assistant governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Christopher Kent, has used a speech to the Economic Society in Brisbane to add a third factor: the employment consequences of the economy's accelerated shift from goods to services.
Recent figures show that total population growth has slowed from 1.8 per cent in 2012 to 1.4 per cent in 2014. This slowdown is mainly the result of a decline in the rate of net immigration as skilled workers on temporary 457 visas attracted by the resources boom leave for home when their jobs end, and Kiwi workers go home or stay home.
Slower population growth means slower growth in demand but, equally, slower growth in the population of working age and thus in the economy's supply-side potential or "trend" rate of growth.
This has prompted the Reserve to lower its growth forecasts for 2016 a fraction but eliminate its earlier forecast of rising unemployment, leaving it little changed over the next 18 months.
Since the working population hasn't grown as fast as had been expected, this implies the improvement in the productivity of labour has been a fraction greater than first thought.
Last week's figures from the bureau show wage rates rising just 2.3 per cent over the year to June. Wage growth has slowed to a similar extent as happened in the recession of the early 1990s, even though unemployment has risen by much less than it did then.
Kent says wages may have become more flexible over time and there may have been some general decline in the bargaining power of labour.
Whatever, "low wage growth across the economy has enabled firms to employ more labour than would otherwise have been the case".
But Kent says his sense is that "low wage growth only goes some way to explaining the recent pick-up in labour demand".
Now the likely role of a change in the composition of economic activity. Consumer spending, home building and net exports of services (that is, exports of services minus imports of services) have grown reasonably strongly over the past year, even though overall GDP growth has slowed a fraction.
Surveys suggest that business conditions for firms providing services to households have improved greatly since mid-2013. Conditions for firms providing services to businesses are above average. But those for firms producing or distributing goods remain below average.
These survey results line up reasonably well with employment growth in the three sectors. They also fit with the continuing weakness in business investment spending.
Kent's figuring shows, on average, each worker in the household services sector requires the backing of only about $100,000 worth of capital equipment, whereas each worker in the goods sector (including mining) requires capital equipment of almost $400,000.
Get it? If the fastest-growing parts of the economy are labour-intensive, they can grow and create more jobs without this requiring the same degree of increase in business investment spending and, hence, the same degree of overall growth in the economy.
This compositional change in demand from goods to services – from capital-intensive to labour-intensive industries – is a long-term trend.
But Kent argues there is also a cyclical element to it, as mining investment unwinds and growth in housing construction and consumption – which is increasingly dominated by services – picks up.
Another part of it is that the fall in the dollar has encouraged Australians and foreigners to direct more of their spending to Australian tourism, education and business services.
Over the past three years, the extra workers employed in service industries have outnumbered the extra workers employed in the goods sector by five to one.
It adds up to two things. With slower population growth, we can grow more slowly without being worse off materially. And we don't need to grow as fast to get unemployment falling.
